


Not Just Nuts And Dolts

by Flexor



Category: RWBY
Genre: Sadness, post-season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 10:01:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6513637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flexor/pseuds/Flexor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This just jumped into my brain after a chat with DubiousPhysics. It's set after the War is Won and our heroes are recovering a bit in Atlas, just about ready to go home. Penny Polendina's father has a surprise for Ruby, but is there really such a thing as a nice surprise?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Just Nuts And Dolts

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Failsafe](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6499105) by [DubiousPhysics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DubiousPhysics/pseuds/DubiousPhysics). 



Atlas was nice. All clean and machines and modern and things. It was where Yang's new arm came from. People here were _clever_. Still, she longed for home. Patch, with its wooden houses, thick blankets, warm fires. She was set to return in a few days. Weiss would not be coming, but Yang and Blake would. As soon as the people in Vale rebuilt the Beacon Tower and got the scrolls working again, they'd all come back and there would be more classes. Ruby looked forward to going _Yechh_ again at classes.

There was a knock on her door, and when she opened it, a comfortably fat man with a bald head, a white beard, and a kind smile, stood in front of her.

"Hello Ruby. I'm Penny's father. My name is Ghepetto. Could I talk with you for a few minutes?"

"You made Penny?" Ruby reached out and touched the man's hand.

"Well, not on my own. I had a lot of help. But I designed her cognitive matrices, sensory apparatus, personality algorithms, and most importantly, the aura generation orbs." Ghepetto looked at Ruby's silvery eyes, currently gently glazed over. "All the brain work."

"Everything that made Penny, Penny," said Ruby, with a sad smile. "I really enjoyed being her friend."

"Could you come with me? Just for half an hour or so. You could see the lab where we built her. You like mechanics, don't you?"

"Oh yes I do! Though I just do weapons. But Penny was something else entirely."

"She was, wasn't she? Come on, then." 

 

They walked quietly next to each other. Ghepetto had to convince several of the security guards, and one _door_ , that Ruby was cleared to come with him. Finally, there was one door marked P.E.N.N.Y. Mk. 2. Ruby could see that the 2 had been painted over another number. What could this mean? Ruby followed Ghepetto inside with a tingling feeling almost like hope. Ghepetto turned to her.

"Wait here a moment, please."

"Okay."

Ghepetto disappeared behind a curtain like the ones you have in hospitals. She could hear his voice, accompanied by the clicking of keys.

"Wake up, my dear. Status?"

There was a different voice. "All diagnostics green. Power at eighty-four percent. Motor functions operational. Combat subsystems off-line."

Ruby started to shake. That voice. She would recognise it in a crowd of a million people.

"Good, my child. There's someone here I'd like you to meet. Just let me..."

The curtains twitched aside, and Ruby's eyes opened wide. The girl swung her legs from the bed to the floor, stood up and waved at Ruby.

"Salut-"

In a blur of rose petals, Ruby sprang forward, shouting Penny's name in an ear-splitting shriek. She barreled straight into Penny and almost threw her back onto the bed. Penny stared wide-eyed at the strange creature wailing at her with her arms tight round her.

"So good to see you... so happy you're alive... thought you were gone..."

"Father? What..." Penny looked down on Ruby's dark hair. "Who is this?"

"It's one of Mark One's friends from Vale," said Ghepetto. "Her name is Ruby Rose."

"Her eyes are leaking on my shirt," said Penny.

Ruby took a short breath, looked up at Penny.

"You don't _remember_ me?"

"Negative," said Penny. She looked at Ruby's face as if studying it carefully. "Sorry," she added.

There was a hand on Ruby's shoulder, and she looked up into Ghepetto's kind old eyes.

"We had to restore the backup from just before she left for Beacon. There was massive file corruption on the storage unit we recovered from the Coliseum."

"So she's forgotten me?"

Ghepetto shook his head. "She hasn't forgotten you. She has never met you. This is Penny as she was two years ago. She never went to Vale. She never met you."

Ruby looked back at... Penny. Penny gave her a brilliant smile, and it was almost exactly the same smile she remembered.

"I am glad to meet you, Friend Ruby Rose! If you wish, we can paint each other's nails and try on clothes and talk about cute boys."

Ruby's lips were smile-shaped. "That'd be... nice."

"Sen- _sational_ ," said Penny. "First, I have to charge up my battery to ninety-five percent. Until then, I can only go as far as the length of this cable."

Ruby swallowed and took Penny's hand. "Then you get on with it, Penny. I'll come to see you before I leave."

"Very good! I'll be coming to Beacon myself when it's rebuilt. So we'll be in the same school together. It's going to be _great_!"

"Can't wait," said Ruby. 

* * *

 

Yang walked into their room to find Ruby sitting all curled up on one end of the sofa.

"Hey Sis! Get your shoes on! Papa Schnee is taking us out to dinner. I'm gonna wear a really low cut top and take deep breasts. Breaths! I mean breaths!"

Ruby looked up at Yang from under her dark hair, and giggled. "Do you have any shame at all?"

"When I find a use for it, I'll be sure to get some." Yang frowned, noticing Ruby's red eyes. "Hey. What's up, Sis? You look like crap."

Ruby hugged her knees. "I saw Penny today."

Yang's jaw dropped. "Penny is _alive_?"

"Yes. No. They... they rebuilt her."

"Wow," said Yang. "They can do that? That's great!"

Ruby bent her head down and sobbed.

"Hey. Budge up, Squirt." Yang sat down next to her little sister. She could just have sat down on Ruby's other side, but she needed her left arm for putting round her shoulder. "Talk to me."

"She doesn't remember me. She doesn't remember Beacon. The tournament. Pyrrha. They couldn't get all her memories from her head. So they put her back the way she was before she ever met us."

"Whoa," said Yang. "This is a bit like just getting a new cat, but worse. So what's she like?"

"She's exactly the way she was when we met her. Heh. Just as weird." Ruby looked up into Yang's eyes, drew a bit closer. "She's lovely. She's exactly the way Penny was. I like her. How can I not like her? She's... Penny. She's coming to Beacon, and maybe by the time we all get there, I can forget about today. Just pretend that the doctors made her all better. That it just messed with her head a little and that's why she's forgottten things."

Yang reached out for Ruby's knees, and pulled her onto her lap. Ruby put her head on Yang's broad shoulder and cried quietly.

"I'll do my best, and I'll be as good a friend to her as I can be, and I'll come to like her. But this is not _our_ Penny. They've done everything they could to make her the way she was, but she's someone else." Ruby curled up in her big sister's strong arms and let her tears flow freely.

"And Penny is still dead." 


End file.
